Massachusetts has been America's laboratory for experimentation and innovation for nearly four centuries.

Yet in 2014, our commonwealth’s commitment to progressive public policy designed to aid our most vulnerable children has fallen behind.

Seventeen states, including Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, and Utah – not exactly hotbeds of progressive politics, have passed legislation or implemented policies allowing undocumented immigrants who graduate from a local high school to receive in-state tuition rates at public colleges and universities.

Even New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie recently signed in-state tuition into law.

So why does Massachusetts lag when others lead?

Immigrants searching for a land filled with opportunities and a better life settled on Massachusetts as the birthplace of freedom in the New World.

But currently, only immigrants with a federal work permit are eligible for in-state tuition. In 2012, President Obama announced Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a federal program allowing immigrants who came to the United States as children under the age of 16, along with other requirements, to gain work authorization. Yet many students in Massachusetts remain ineligible for the in-state tuition rate, having not yet obtained a federal work permit.

Pending legislation on Beacon Hill can change that. This year, legislators can continue our proud history of leading America by passing “An act regarding tuition equity for high school graduates in the Commonwealth,” a bill sponsored by Representative Denise Provost and Senator Linda Dorcena Forry. The bill grants undocumented immigrants access to in-state tuition, with its key provision requiring they attend high school for three years in Massachusetts and graduate.

This bill is a win for our schools, our students, our families, and our economy. I urge my colleagues in the Legislature to bring it to a vote and pass it without delay.

Few undocumented immigrants can afford to pay out-of-state tuition rates. Offering them in-state tuition would provide our 29 public colleges and universities with about $2 million in new revenues during the first year alone, according to the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation. By the fourth year, that revenue would increase to between $6 million and $7 million.

Because the number of students likely to enroll remains fewer than 1,000, schools would not incur high costs and instead would actually profit from this policy.

We need our talented, innovative, and imaginative young people to stay here in Massachusetts. We can’t afford to lose a single motivated young person and miss out on the contribution he or she will make to our rapidly changing innovation economy.

Yet passing this legislation is not only a question of economics or politics.

Fundamentally, it’s a question about what type of society we want to live in.

Will we be a Commonwealth that provides all its children who work hard and play by the rules, regardless of where they come from and what they look like, with the resources they need to create a brighter future?

It’s time to make fairness and common sense central ingredients of our state’s immigration policy when our national policy, paralyzed for years by Washington’s partisan gridlock, is both inequitable and illogical.

It’s time to level the playing field for hard-working immigrants who grew up with an unwavering belief in the American Dream – the idea that educational achievement translates to economic mobility – yet suddenly see that dream collapse after 12th grade with the daunting price tag of a college education.

It’s time we honor the centuries-old principle of opportunity that built this country – the principle that says if you work hard to raise a family and educate your children, they can build a better life because of your sacrifices.

Immigrant children who grew up with an unshakeable devotion to this Commonwealth and this country are not asking for much. They simply want a chance to go to school and build a career.

Who are we, as elected officials, to get in their way?

Washington may be broken, but that has never stopped Massachusetts from leading the way.

So let’s not play politics with our children and their future. Let’s allow hard-working high school students who come from another country the opportunity to go to college.

Steve Grossman is state treasurer of Massachusetts and a Democratic candidate for governor.